


Shot Through the Heart

by WindWisp



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 23:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4724132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WindWisp/pseuds/WindWisp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two weeks, he mused as blood began to seep from the gaping hole in his chest onto the concrete around him. Two weeks, and Neku still couldn't discern if Josh's eyes were violet or grey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shot Through the Heart

When the bullet passes through Neku’s heart, the adrenaline and panic keep him from feeling the physical pain. All he perceives is the widening of a hole in his chest that he didn’t know was there in the first place, that he’d managed to ignore until a bullet pushed its way through the festering emotions and onto the physical plane.

It was Josh. Yoshiya Kiryuu had shot him. In the heart, as cheesy as that sounds. And as long as we’re being melodramatic, we might as well point out that the shot had been fired long before Josh ever pulled the trigger.

Neku wasn’t sure when he started falling for Josh. It couldn’t have been when he was suckered into paying for the idiot’s bowl of deluxe ramen. And it certainly wasn’t when Josh had teased him for an entire day about how good he looked in that dress from Natural Puppy. In fact, if he could think right now, he’d be hard-pressed to find any moment in their week together when Josh had shown himself to be endearing, kind, or even remotely likeable.

But as it was, Neku’s brain was no longer receiving the blood it needed to function, and memories were being ignored in favor of more necessary functions, such as breathing, keeping vital organs working, and desperately trying to stitch up the hole that had appeared with far too much warning in the muscle of Neku’s chest. 

It was funny, Neku mused as the blood began to seep onto the concrete around him, that what would kill him would not be a giant mammoth noise crushing his bones to splinters, nor a Reaper who viewed him as little more than a token, but instead a tiny piece of metal and a boy who he had come to trust against his better judgement, all at the urging of Hanekoma.

CAT.

His brain really couldn’t handle this right now.

All thought narrowed into a single focus: to keep breathing.

To keep breathing, and those violet eyes that had managed to pierce their way into his consciousness despite his critical state.

Or were they grey?

Seven days of observing, seven more of thinking, and Neku still couldn’t discern the boy’s eye color. He could describe them without hesitation – piercing, volatile, able to see both minute detail and far away at the same time, yet lacking precision when it came to things in the in-between. Liquid mercury when angry, storm clouds when mocking, laser-sharp when focused. All of this, Neku could tell you without a moment’s contemplation, but not whether the boy’s eye color was violet or grey.

And yet, as Neku gazed at the rapidly blurring face of the boy above him, he decided it didn’t matter.

Maybe there was a language somewhere that had a word to describe the color that was Joshua’s eyes.

But Neku would never find out.

Because right here, very shortly, Neku was going to die.

But because it meant his last sight was a hint of remorse in those indescribable eyes,

Neku found that he didn’t care.


End file.
